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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28924956">The Blue Terror</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmaladeSkies/pseuds/marmaladeSkies'>marmaladeSkies</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>No Antibiotics in Fodlan [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Cholera, Gen, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:14:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,275</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28924956</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmaladeSkies/pseuds/marmaladeSkies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashe’s parents are sick. They’ll get better soon, right?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>No Antibiotics in Fodlan [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922173</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Blue Terror</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Morning started early in Saint Cethleann’s House. The moment the sky started to lighten, the nuns got to work. Bread had to start baking, porridge had to start cooking, vegetables chopped and swept into the perpetual stew. Guests -the destitute, the orphaned, and in this particular case the dispossessed- were not exempt; a charity the Order may be, but their funds were small and the day’s work large. Those who couldn’t work could stay, of course, but those who <i>wouldn’t</i> were shown the door.</p><p>	Ashe was young, but he was still fit to work. His hands were small, but they could still hold a knife. His frame was slight, but he could still reach the counter if he stood on a crate. A regular broom was long and awkward in his hands, but the nuns had a child-sized one he could use.</p><p>	It was subtly different from his chores at home. His parents cooked with salted pork, fish, and as many varieties of vegetables as they could get their hands on. Saint Cethleann’s House used bread, peas, pickled cabbage, and beets almost to exclusion, rarely with onions or even carrots if there were some half-bad ones being sold for cheap. A typical meal was bread, pease porridge, and a scoop from the stew, and no more. The idea of having meat, especially fresh meat, was laughable.</p><p>	(In three days, there would indeed be meat as the nuns grew desperate enough to trap rats.)</p><p>	On most days, even the idea of having a second meal was laughable. The funds raised by the Order of Saint Cethleann were only meant to support a few nuns and a few healers, not dozens of refugees. The perpetual stew was no longer perpetual, scraped clean each night to try to squeeze out a little more sustenance for the guests of the House. Instead of being a constantly changing medley of flavors from whatever had been added to it through the weeks, it was mostly just bread and beet soup.</p><p>	Ashe knew that it was just because the Order was stretched thin helping the survivors of the illness, but he still missed having good meals. His siblings, too young to understand <i>why</i> the food was so bland and so sparse, complained whenever split peas made yet another appearance on the menu and then complained even more when they ran out and had to go to bed without supper.</p><p>	It was just until his parents got better, Ashe reminded himself. Once his parents were better, they could go back to eating good meals, reliable meals. Once his parents were better, they could go back to sleeping in a bed instead of on a blanket on the floor, squeezed between Mama Ruža, who was no longer a mama now, and Old Man Oleg, who babbled incessantly into the night and didn’t seem to realize that his daughters had sent him away. Once his parents were better, they could go home.</p><p>	(In two weeks, he would curse himself for his optimism.)</p><p>	On some days, but not many, Ashe found the time to leave the House and sneak over to Fitil Ward to watch the plague-men work.</p><p>	The procession began every morning, not long after the Order of Saint Cethleann started their day. Clad in robes and masks, the plague-men went into each house to examine the disease’s victims for signs of life and replace the thatching used to soak up the waste that streamed endlessly from the bodies of the afflicted. The living, they left alone for the healers to make another attempt at curing. The dead, they brought to the pyres burning on the outskirts of Lionne.</p><p>	If everyone in a household had perished, it was the plague-men who tore down the house to feed the flames. It was the plague-men who removed every last possession to be burned or melted down. When the blue terror came calling, no one took any risks. If no one volunteered to wear the black robes and bird mask (a mark of office, of course, but also a disguise to avoid being rejected by society after the disease blew over), the authorities would conscript some unlucky few for the job.</p><p>	(In five days, they’d resort to looking for volunteers at Saint Cethleann’s House. Mama Ruža would go so one of the nuns wouldn’t have to. She’d never return.)</p><p>	It was a horrible disease, the blue terror, and no one wanted to work with it. Someone who caught it could feel fine in the morning and be dead by evening. It was also a simple disease; it didn’t bother with fever or coughing, not rash nor pox. It simply made its victims shit themselves to death. There was no cure, and the only treatment (which rarely did more than delay the inevitable) was to give the afflicted water to replace that which their bodies spewed out. Healing magic did no good at all- magic could not cure diseases, only fix the damage caused by them, and lack of water wasn’t the kind of damage magic could help with. </p><p>	If it was hard to spread, even that could be handled, but the blue terror struck in clusters. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of people would take ill at once, even ones that had had no contact with each other. The only way to avoid catching it was to go far away from the area the disease struck, but that was difficult. The moment anyone realized you had left because of the terror, you would be rejected and forced to move back.</p><p>	At least the robes of the plague-men offered some form of anonymity, even if people sometimes accused them of stealing from the homes they were meant to look after. Ashe thought that was dumb- why would anyone steal from a sickhouse? Wouldn’t that just get the thieves sick too?</p><p>	(In a year, he would break into the home of a woman with whooping cough. An empty stomach was a strong motivator.)</p><p>	Ashe’s mother had volunteered to be a plague-man after his father took ill. She had quickly fallen ill herself. So had his aunt, uncle, and all of his cousins. Only his siblings and Ashe himself had been spared, and only because they’d been hurried to Saint Cethleann’s House as soon as the disease appeared. The Goddess would protect them, they were told.</p><p>	Why hadn’t the Goddess protected his mother? Why not his father? Why not everyone else in Fitil Ward, which had been the one hit hardest by the terror? None of the nuns had an answer for him.</p><p>	(He never did find one.)</p><p>	On some days, but not many, Ashe left Saint Cethleann’s House and went to see if his family had survived the night. He wasn’t allowed in the Ward -no risks meant no one going in or out except to bring bodies and possessions to the flames- but there was a rooftop where he could watch the procession.</p><p>	Fitil Ward was large and Ashe was young, but there were still plenty of people there that he knew well. That meant that many of the bodies brought through the city gate were ones he recognized. Yesterday, he had seen the candlemaker’s children, who had spent the entire last summer teaching Ashe’s sister how to play one of the many ball games that proliferated in the city, pass through the gate, their eyes sunken and skin bluish-grey in death. Today’s victims were the last of Old Man Oleg’s daughters and three of his grandchildren. </p><p>	But Ashe didn’t see his parents among the bodies, and that was what mattered.</p><p>	(In one week, he’d realize they’d been dead for three.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Am I mean for doing this? Yes. Do I feel guilty for it? Not at all.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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